Get a big bang for your buck from quick and sharp workouts
Lockdown level 3 sounds like the name of a B-grade action movie starring Eric Roberts. And many of the decisions made on our behalf by an ensemble of scrambling ministers appear as well thought out as the plot tropes in B-grade gems such as Best of the Best 2.
Covid-19 has been accused of many things, such as accelerating digital transformation, keeping Nkosazana DlaminiZuma smoking hot and spoiling the best-laid plans of gym aficionados and fitness freaks.
Since day one of the lockdown chocolates and sweets have been on the essential services list. “I have to stock up on my Twinkies and bubblegum soda, but don’t worry, officer, I won’t buy open-toe shoes or go for a run after sitting for nine hours in front of my computer.”
Luckily, at level 3 and beyond we can run or cycle from 6am to 6pm, under strict social-distancing conditions. There won’t be any sports facilities or gyms, as the only small gatherings allowed are at places of worship. We shan’t blaspheme, but to some, that’s exactly what exercise joints are.
However, let bygones be bygones, hold no grudges and move on. There is enough science to prove that exercise is in fact a wonder pill for health and longevity (think the opposite of comorbidities).
There is proof that you can get an exceptionally big bang for your buck with short exercise sessions. This helps in the always-on home work environment where 30 minutes is golden.
Genetic metabolic neurologist Mark Tarnopolsky says, in a Time magazine article headlined “The new science of exercise”, studies show that where blood is drawn after exercise, research finds that many positive changes occur throughout the body during and after a workout.
Time quotes him as saying: “Going for a run is going to improve your skin health, your eye health, your gonadal health. It’s unbelievable.”
The article adds: “If there were a drug that could do for human health everything that exercise can, it would likely be the most valuable pharmaceutical ever developed.”
The Harvard Medical School’s website cites a study spanning 30 years that proved this point. In 1966, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School conducted a study called “The Dallas bed rest and training study”.
Researchers found five healthy, strong 20-year-old men and tested health markers such as heart rates, blood pressure, heart pumping output, body fat and muscle strength. They put them on three weeks’ bed rest and repeated the study. The new health-marker numbers were now the equivalent of men twice their age.
They were then put on an eight-week exercise programme and tested again. The bad numbers were all reversed, and in most cases were better than before.
Three decades later, the same men were tested. The researchers skipped the bed rest, so as not to endanger the men, and conducted the same measurements and found that all their numbers were better than they were straight after the bed rest 30 years earlier.
This implied that inactivity was worse for health than time. The men in their 50s were then put on a six-month programme of walking, skipping, jogging and cycling.
Medium, which cited the study in an article headlined “Exercise is the fountain of youth”, writes: “The average weight loss [after the six-month training programme] was 10 pounds [4.5kg], but dramatic improvements were seen in resting heart rates, blood pressures, and heart pumping capacity. In those areas, the same people had better numbers than before they went on the bed-rest at age 20.”
The good news is that the benefits of exercise are not just the preserve of those with the time to put in long, gruelling workouts. One can gain immense benefit from short, intense sessions.
Now that we have been granted 12 hours exercise leeway, from 6am to 6pm, by the producers of Best of the Best 2, there really is no excuse not to find 20 minutes in which to invest in our wellness.
The Telegraph recently ran a story headlined “Fast fitness: how four-second workouts can keep you in shape during lockdown”. While it sounds like an infomercial, the content is actually useful, if somewhat impractical.
The newspaper cites a study in which researchers were able to prove benefit from exceptionally short workouts.
“The study was small, with only eight people, and was conducted on a specialised bike in the lab, that most people don’t have access to, but it still has implications for the potentially big benefits of tiny workouts and is far from the first study to show the brilliance of short sharp fitness.”
It says that the specialised bikes cost almost £3,000. In rand, that’s about the equivalent of two cartons of cigarettes at the current rate.
Last week The Water Cooler introduced readers to the Tabata protocol, an exercise style developed in Japan in the 1990s that consists of exercising at full intensity for 20 seconds, resting 10 and repeating eight times. That’s four minutes of near-hell work time, with the added benefit of improved fitness all-round: both aerobic and anaerobic.
While Tabata may be extreme, the concept of highintensity interval training is known for its benefits.
Dr Mike Posthumus, head of high performance at the Sports Science Institute of SA, says: “Interval training, which can be defined as periods of intense exercise separated by periods of recovery, may elicit adaptations far greater to the adaptations one would expect to see from moderate-intensity continuous exercise.”
Posthumus says there are two types of interval training, high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and sprint interval training (SIT).
“HIIT is a near-maximal effort at an intensity which elicits up to 80% of your maximal heart rate performed for a few minutes. In contrast,
SIT is short period of all-out or supra-maximal efforts performed for a few seconds.
“Both HIIT and SIT intervals have been shown to produce favourable improvements in performance and health outcomes,” Posthumus says.
David Leith, a biokineticist at the High Performance Centre at the Sports Science Institute, says average folk would enjoy a more profound effect from high-intensity interval training than highly trained athletes. He says that if you are going to perform high-intensity work, warms-ups and mobility drills are important to prevent injury.
He says that research on SIT finds that even short sessions elicit good results. These sprints followed by rest periods are shown to have significant effects on metabolic markers and mitochondrial adaptations, “showing you can increase your aerobic fitness in a short amount of time”.
“With SIT you are going allout and using your entire phosphocreatine stores and need longer to replenish them, whereas with HIIT you aren’t going quite as hard and don’t need as long, relatively speaking, to recover,” he says.
“With SIT and HIIT you can have a profound effect on your metabolic health and aerobic fitness in less than 30 minutes. Only doing high-intensity work is not recommended, though. It is important to alternate hard and easy days. It is good to keep low-intensity work together with high-intensity training, just like the elite athletes do. They spend 80% of the time in the low-intensity zone and only 20% of the time in the highintensity zone.”
HOW TO SIT
If you are pressed for time you can try a SIT-type of exercise regime. Sprint maximally for 30 seconds on a bicycle, or perform another means of allout exercise, followed by four to five minutes of recovery. Repeat this five times, says Posthumus.
A DRUG THAT COULD DO FOR HEALTH WHAT EXERCISE CAN WOULD BE THE MOST VALUABLE PHARMACEUTICAL EVER DEVELOPED
HOW TO HIIT
Leith says you can do a fiveminute warm-up, with twominute intervals with twominute rest periods. If you repeat this six times you would be done within half an hour.
There are varieties of work vs rest protocols, and they demand more or less skill and are better tailored for different fitness levels.
Take advantage of the online fitness or call a trainer — you may emerge from lockdown level 3 a trouser size down.
THE GOOD NEWS IS THE BENEFITS OF EXERCISE ARE NOT THE PRESERVE OF THOSE WITH TIME TO PUT IN GRUELLING, LONG WORKOUTS